I wrote the post below in April, during the Great Quarantine (thus the time references are a little off), but I think it is still appropriate to consider as 2020 is now drawing to a close, our cases of infection and hospitalization are rising, and it seems we are about to re-enter into a similar shutdown once again. Many people I know are “so glad that 2020 is almost over” – and believe me, I get that sentiment. But will the challenges of this year magically disappear with the flip of a calendar page? Mmm… not likely. So we find ourselves in much the same place as we were in April, but less panicked and more weary. Still questioning. Still – and perhaps even more – in need of the clarity and vision that was promised at the beginning of this year.
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In the flurry of January and New Year’s dreams and goals, 2020 was called out to be the year of vision and clarity of sight. Now the comment I see most about this year is “Can we hit the reset button?” Our expectations have gone pointedly unmet, and our hopes have been cruelly and dramatically dashed. Many have chalked this year up to “just make it through” while scrambling to make ends meet. Please hear me – I get it. I’m NOT making light of your situation or the struggle you are going through. But in this post, I want to pose one simple question: what if we are getting what we asked for?
I know that sounds antagonistic. I don’t mean “getting what you asked for” as in a punishment or revenge, or even twisted sort of justice. But what if the vision and clarity of sight that we all claimed to be rushing into just three-and-a-half months ago is coming to pass in the way we least expected? What if this viral pandemic is our laser surgery to remove the cataracts? What if the idols of financial security, health, physical relationships, and busyness that have grown over our eyes and clouded our vision for decades are being painfully and mercifully cut away? What if we have been isolated from all our crutches and coping mechanisms so that we are forced to turn to the Lord Himself instead of secondhand revelation? Again, please hear me. I’m NOT saying God started a pandemic to teach you a lesson. But what if the excruciating light that is shining on all of your fear, worry, control, stress, and anger in this desperate time is actually a laser trying to cut it all away?
It was not lost on me that this crisis started in the middle of the Lenten season – a time of voluntary self-denial and refocus. But now that Lent has drawn to a close, we have shifted from voluntary to involuntary – a forced solitude and retreat for those who perhaps would not choose it. Or at least would not choose it for this long. My ideal retreat is 3 days. That’s long enough to focus, remove distractions, get some rest… Yup, 3 days is perfect.
We are now 29 days past those 3.
So what are we finding out about ourselves? How could this time possibly be a time of new clarity and vision? Well, we as a society have already been increasingly socially distant over the past decade – text, Instagram, Twitter, and Snapchat have replaced much of our face-to-face interaction. And for the past decade, we’ve been okay with that. Why not now? All those avenues are still available to us, but suddenly they aren’t enough anymore. We plan a “drive-by” at our family or friends’ houses just so we can see their faces in some other way than on a screen. We lament the ability, now privilege, of going to work IN PERSON to see our co-workers and clients.
What if this involuntary physical distancing is showing us the danger of our decade-long choice to voluntarily distance ourselves from one another?
[December update:] As I look back over the past 9 months, the defining factor that echoes through each day is questions – most of them beginning with “What if?” What if I get COVID today? What if I’m already sick and don’t know it? What if I lose my job… my house… my family… my life? WHAT IF???
Other questions also swirl around our heads, invading our daily routines and leaving us unsettled: When will this ever end? When can we get back to normal? Is there even a normal anymore? Will I ever get to hug my grandparents again? WHAT ABOUT CHRISTMAS?!?!
For some, these questions are even more serious: How do I survive homelessness? How do I get food for my kids without my job? How do I keep going without the loved one that was stolen from me by this virus?
Valid questions. Probably no answers. So where does that leave us?
In the same place we have always needed to be: the palm of Jesus’s hand. The place that we cannot be snatched from by life, death, the past, the future, nor any other created thing, including a pandemic.
I recently read this powerfully apt quote by Hudson Taylor: “It does not matter how great the pressure is. What really matters is where the pressure lies – whether it comes between you and God, or whether it presses you nearer His heart.” We have all been greatly pressured by the events of the past 9 months, although we each have had our own unique experience – mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. But maybe it’s time to start asking a different kind of “What if?” What if what we have been going through is what Ann Voskamp calls the “hard eucharisteo” – the gift that is hard to be thankful for, but is nonetheless a gift? What if we have been given the disguised gift of clarity, vision, and insight in ways that would never have been possible without this sudden and painful disruption? What if 2020 was everything it was promised to be… but in a way we never could have imagined or asked for?
What if we have been given the gift of new vision toward God, ourselves, and others more clearly through the shifting of the past 9 months?
What if we we started thanking God for it and doing something with it?
La Aventura de la Vida 